SDN Launch ‘Validates’ Next-Gen Networking, Adara Says

While there’s lots of buzz still about the potential disruptive nature of software-defined networking (SDN), other than for big players like Google, the cloud-friendly technology has not been something everyday companies can order up.

Software-defined networking has arrived. Will the network ever be the same again? Photo: Sailor Coruscant/FlickrAdara Networks is aiming to bring the hardware-independent networking technology that has Cisco talking up battle plans to the enterprise and smaller businesses, announcing this week that its SDN platform was shipping to the U.S. market both directly, and available via Tech Data’s network of resellers. Adara said the rollout would mean the technology would be available to 7,000 businesses, and that more shipments and service-provider availability would follow.

“While the benefits of SDN are easily envisioned in service provider networks, Adara’s announcement underscores the immediate utility of its Full Stack Engine platform in delivering the benefits of SDN to enterprise data centers and networks of all types and scales,” the company said in a press release, also echoing what it said at the recent summit: “SDN is the future of networking and that future is now.”

Eric Johnson, Chairman and CEO of Adara, told Cloudline the new offering was “a fully virtual platform” that runs on all hardware, legacy or not. “Organizations can approach SDN without any hardware challenges, and can ultimately enhance the legacy equipment they’ve already invested in,” Johnson said.

“SDN originated from the unmet needs of data center administrators, network operators, and developers; those needs being the freedom to create operational capabilities in an individualized manner, enabling customization via configuration,” Johnson said. “By gaining transparency and control of the network, enterprises are able to scale to meet overwhelming network loads, manage traffic flow and utilize unused resources, which will not only save money but increase overall profit margins for years to come.”

Adara is making several of its SDN products, including Horizon, Ecliptic, Axis, Echo, Sirius, Orion, and Comet, available individually, or as modules in the Constellation Full Stack Engine, part of the ADARA SDN product portfolio that was demonstrated at the Open Networking Summit, the company said.

The company said its SDN platform will be featured in Tech Data’s 6,000-square-foot Technology Solutions Center, home to HP Solutions Center, the Cisco Solutions Center at Tech Data and the Symantec Solutions Center at Tech Data, as well as the Healthcare IT Pavilion and the Unified Communications Center.

“The shipment and distribution of our enterprise SDN and cloud computing products is an incredibly important milestone for our organization and the industry, as enterprises are ready to be unshackled from the confines of traditional siloed networking,” Johnson said.

Bob Laliberte, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategies Group, told Network Computing of the demo that preceded this launch: “It will be great to see demonstrations with commercially available products because with any new technology, users are always looking for validation. Who else is doing this? How are they using it? What benefits does it provide?”

Now that it’s shipping, does Adara’s platform validate SDN, as Laliberte says on his blog about Google kicking off the event by announcing they are using OpenFlow and SDN in a production environment. “That is a pretty good proof point for the technology”? (But Google is has been found to have been working with Nicira on developing for its SDN plans.)

Johnson said that unlike other SDN solutions, Adara’s platform was not limited to virtualization of the switch and router alone. “Adara takes a full systems approach, not only virtualizing the switches and routers, but creating a network overlay which virtualizes and provides transparency into layers 1-7 of the network; this includes power management and lamda’s (wavelengths) at Layer 1 (Physical Layer),” he said.

“Essentially, we solve the challenges of computing and networking comprehensively, not just portions of the problem with point solutions; customers believe that incomplete approaches cause problem shifting, not problem solving,” he told Cloudline.

Johnson said his company’s SDN platform was geared toward enterprises and service providers, but as a complete solution it could benefit anyone looking at SDN and the OpenFlow API.